A Model for Community-Engaged and Relational Approach to Qualitative Data Analysis

Little has been written on how qualitative research can effectively include community participant perspectives, interpretations, and feedback during analysis. When conducting community-based participatory research (CBPR) with historically marginalized communities, incorporating community perspectives during analysis is especially important to assess researcher biases, de-center Western research paradigms and assumptions, incorporate community and cultural values, and create relevant and appropriate knowledge to inform research outcomes. While steps have been taken to incorporate Indigenous paradigms, methodologies, and community feedback into research, little has been written on the exact process and steps teams can take to incorporate community members in the data analysis process. At our academic research center, we seek to create a more inclusive and decolonized approach to qualitative analysis grounded in Etuaptmumk/Two-Eyed Seeing and a CBPR framework that intentionally includes community-based researchers and community advisory members, often without research experience, from partner Indigenous communities in the analytic process. By diversifying the perspectives present during qualitative analysis, our approach becomes more relational, reflective of community and cultural values, and able to respond to on-the-ground issues. Here, we describe our iterative community-engaged qualitative analysis approach as it relates to a current multi-sited ethnographic study of Alzheimer’s disease and related dementias among Indigenous communities in North America. In describing our process, we invite researchers to consider appropriate ways to include community perspectives while also balancing research teams and dynamics. This process is ongoing and reciprocal, requiring respectful and open dialogue, reflexivity, and attention to power dynamics, yet ensures validity, trustiworthiness, and relevance of findings.